Laika
Early life Laika (Russian: Лайка; c. 1954 – November 3, 1957) was the Soviet dog was sent in to earth orbit on Sputnik 2. She was the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth. It was Kudryavka The 5 kg (11 lb) mongrel, possibly part-husky (or part-Samoyed) and part-terrier, was born c. 1954 in Moscow. The mission Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, wanted a spacecraft launched on November 7, 1957, and a more sophisticated satellite (Sputnik 3) would not be ready until December. the Idea of sending an animal in to orbit then emerged. The Soviet space program needed a test animal to put up by 1957 and they chose a dog in 1956. Laika became the first animal launched into orbit, paving the way for human spaceflight. Death She died on November 3, 1957 in Sputnik 2, due to overheating in geocentric orbit.The Soviet scientists had planned to euthanaised the dog with poison food, but Dimitri Malashenkov, one of the scientists behind the Sputnik 2 mission, chose to reveal on October 2002, the fact that Laika had died by the fourth circuit of flight from overheating due to technical problems. Final phisical distruction Over five months later, after 2,570 orbits, Sputnik 2 burnt up along with Laika's remains on April 14, 1958. Protests Anti-vivisectionist, anti-Soviets and space-phoebes had a field-day! The UK's National Canine Defence League wanted all dog owners to hold a minute's silence, while the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) had received protests even before the Radio Moscow broadcast had finished. Animal rights groups protested outside Soviet embassies and United Nations in New York as right wing activists began covertly suturing it all up. Scientists and laboratory researchers in the U.S. did offer some support for the Soviets, at least before the news of Laika's death. It was not until 1998, several years after the collapse of the former Soviet regime, that Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists responsible for her death, finally expressed regret: :"Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog." the Polish scientific periodical, "Kto, Kiedy, Dlaczego" (English:Who, When, Why), published in 1958, broke with the Warsaw Pact's mindless praise for the mission and said not bringing Laika back to Earth alive as "regrettable" and "undoubtedly a great loss for science". Monument Russian officials unveiled a monument to the myatared dog Laika on April 11, 2008, naer the military research facility in Moscow which prepared Laika's flight to space. It featured a dog standing on top of a rocket. The Laika monument unveiled on the eve of Cosmonauts' Day 2008. Laika is memorialized in the form of a statue and plaque at Star City, Russia the Russian Cosmonaut training facility. Later, NASA named a soil target on Mars after Laika during the Mars Exploration Rover mission. Links *http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm *http://time.com/3546215/laika-1957/ *http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-we-still-want-laika-the-space-dog-to-come-home *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laika Category:USSR Category:Soviet Union Category:Nature Category:Manned space travel Category:Space satellites Category:Space Race